♪♪
- This is
one of the pivotal places in the world,
and this is unlike anywhere else.
- I think anyone who comes and views the wonder of the falls has very strong
feelings, perhaps even spiritual feelings.
- You've got this beautiful, magnificent, natural feature,
a waterfall that drops 270 feet.
- Anywhere you stand, you can feel
the ground vibrate.
- You actually see the power that it has.
It's not just a matter of the natural beauty
it pulls people to it.
[NARRATOR] The allure
and power of Snoqualmie Falls captivated one man in particular
who envisioned harnessing the energy of the falling water
to bring electricity to the greater Seattle and Tacoma region.
Utilizing technology still in its infancy, the power plant carved out beneath
the cataract was an engineering marvel of the 19th century.
The impact
of electricity in the Puget Sound region grew exponentially,
to a point where today it is difficult to imagine life without it.
More than 100 years later, the plant continues to generate electricity,
with original equipment still powering the Pacific
Northwest
♪♪
[NARRATOR] For as long as we can trace back our human ancestry.
People have been lured to the power of Snoqualmie Falls
for both spirit and sustenance.
According to Snoqualmie tribal tradition.
The Falls was created as a place to gather resources for the tribe.
The origin story that I have for the Snoqualmie Falls is something
that was shared bya Snoqualmie tribal elder whose name (name in Coast Salish language).
In this story, we meet a being by the name of (name in Coast Salish language)
who is Moon the Transformer.
The work of Moon is to be the person who is going to go around
and change plant and animal species, change the landforms, make the world
so it's going to be ready for the human beings who don't exist yet.
As he is coming upstream, he comes to the place
where Snoqualmie Falls is now, and there was a fish trap
that was stopping the fish from going further up the river.
And so moon signs. This is not a good thing.
They started the salmon coming up so that the people have something to eat.
So he changes the fish.
We're into snow forming falls.
So you can imagine the fish we were transforming
into this majestic falls that we see now.
And he tells Snoqualmie Falls what its job is going to be.
You waterfall shall be a lofty cataract.
Birds flying over, you will fall and people shall gather them up and eat them.
Deer coming down the stream will perish and the people shall have them for food.
Game of every kind shall be found by the people for their subsistence
[NARRATOR] For generations.
the Snoqualmies gathered every summer at the banks of the falls,
taking pride in its beauty.
The first American to write about the cataract, Samuel Hancock,
was led to the falls by a Snoqualmie Guide.
Hancock called it a most beautiful
and imposing spectacle.
Three years later, two U.S.
Army officers were sent to measure its height.
Using a thread, they calculated the falls to be 260 feet high.
Word of the fall soon spread,
encouraging adventurous travelers to make the trek to the site.
The growing attraction prompted the construction of a hotel
on the South Side, allowing visitors the chance to stay overnight
and savor the natural beauty.
The allure of the falls transcended culture.
And it wouldn't be long until the myth of its power would be
transformed into reality.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] Snoqualmie Falls is situated
in a small valley on the Western border of the Cascade Mountains.
The waterfront town of Seattle lay some 30 miles to the west
and the 1880s, Seattle counted
3500 residents and was only the second most populated city
in the Washington territory behind Walla Walla.
But all that would change in a matter of years.
As the United States entered its Gilded Age.
The Northern Pacific spanned the continents,
connecting to Seattle in 1884.
Migrants flooded west, and the promise of a new innovation
called the electricity began to emerge,
powered by coal and steam.
Small power plants sprouted up throughout Seattle
for the singular purpose of providing electricity
to major industries.
Earlier, in 1879,
a man known as the Wizard of Menlo Park
had introduced a device that would usher in this modern age.
Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb proved to be such a sensation.
He built his first factory to mass produce his invention in 1882.
That same
year, a lumber mill in Tacoma used electric lights
to operate throughout the day and now into the night.
While industry has utilized this new source of power,
the residents of Seattle and the Northwest still squinted through the night
using candles or oil burning lamps.
Street lights were illuminated with coal gas
pumped through wood piping buried in the streets.
All the options generated heat, smoke
and noxious odors, not to mention the risk of fire.
- Most of America burned down at some point in the late 1800s,
and that was because of the reliance of actual fire for
for doing work.
[NARRATOR] The solution to these frequent fires was brought to the northwest
by Edison representatives who fanned out across the United States
like missionaries, bringing the message of electric lights.
On March 22nd, 1886, Sidney
Mitchell arranged an exhibition at Jackson Street near Commercial.
1116 Candle power Lamps was stationed along the route,
and when sufficient steam was accumulated, the dynamo was started.
The lights turned on
and the room was immediately made brilliant with a clear white light.
The company has orders for 400 lamps now,
and it is expected that the demand will greatly increase
as soon as the advantages of the light become apparent to the people.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Not everyone rejoiced at the innovation.
Gas company employee Charles Powers sabotaged the electric generating
dynamo, delaying this new form of illumination for months.
Despite the setbacks, Edison formed the Seattle Electric Company
with local businessmen and obtained a franchise from the city
council to run wires along streets and alleyways.
And these early days of electricity, it was clear
not everyone had a firm grasp of its principles.
In one editorial, a Seattle resident wrote.
“How foolish these young men to build the generating station
on the waterfront if they had put it at the top of the hill.
The electricity would run down the wires by gravity.
Now they'll have to pump it.”
The public's ignorance of this new technology was matched
by its suspicions of its danger.
Seattle's first electric streetcars, launched in March of 1889.
Worried many that the current would magnetize watches
and lightning bolts would kill passengers and pedestrians.
But three months later, in the summer heat of June
1889, public sentiment would change.
A spilled glue pot ignited a fire in downtown Seattle,
fueled by kerosene lamps and bursting gas lines.
The blaze skipped from building to building, destroying
64 acres of the waterfront city.
Confidence in the relative safety of electricity grew,
especially when locals witnessed streetcars emerging from the smoke
and chaos with little more than blistered paint.
By the end of the decade,
more than 100 miles of streetcar lines traversed the city, making Seattle
one of the most electrified cities in the nation.
By this time, Edison had built 121
direct current power stations across the country.
Edison's ability to promote this new technology was undeniable.
But the problem with direct current was that it could not be transmitted
further than a mile.
Requiring every neighborhood to have its own coal burning steam power plant
♪♪
[NARRATOR] In the midst of this age of
electricity, a 23 year old Cornell University graduate
stepped off a mosquito steamer in Seattle in 1887.
His name was Charles Hinckley Baker.
And with a degree in civil engineering, he found work
with the Seattle Lakeshore and Eastern Railroad.
- I think that Charles Hinckley Baker was a young man
who wanted to make his mark in the world
and thought of that as being a good thing.
Early in the young engineer's career, he was assigned to pilot
an area of the Cascades that would lead him to a sight
that would spark his imagination.
The line passed within 50 feet of the great
Snoqualmie Falls Cataract, which at that time had no commercial value,
and it was only thought
of as a place of resort for fishermen, tourists and campers.
In the performance of my particular duties,
there was hardly a week passed that I did not see this wasting waterfall,
and it came into my mind at that early time that someday its power
would be carried to the distant cities for utilization there.
Charles Hinckley Baker.
- I think Charles Baker was looking
for the excitement of discovery and creation.
- When Charles Baker saw this sight,
he saw an opportunity.
[NARRATOR] Baker fully understood the expense of excavating and transporting coal
to fuel steam plants that powered the industries at the time.
And saw the falls with its never ending supply of water
as a means to deliver power for a fraction of the cost.
With dreams of his own, Baker left the railroad
and started his own company to capitalize on the new technology of electricity.
One of his first clients was Seattle Pioneer David Denney,
who hired Baker to build a streetcar line from downtown to the university district.
With the assurances of Denny, one of Seattle's wealthiest businessmen.
Baker extended his own line of credit purchasing supplies,
materials and equipment to start the line's construction.
But the panic of 1893
triggered a massive economic blow, wiping out Denny's entire fortune.
Baker was left holding notes for $100,000 worth of unpaid bills.
A five year depression left
millions of men across the nation without jobs.
Railroads went bankrupt and investment
capital evaporated
♪♪
under the pull of the 1893 Depression.
The Chicago Columbian Exposition offered the optimism of the future.
Charles's father, William Taylor Baker, was head of the Chicago Board of Trade
and president of the 1893 Exposition.
A friend of William Baker was invited to the exposition
to demonstrate the capabilities of alternating current,
a competing technology to Edison's direct current
at Twilight.
On opening day, George Westinghouse threw the switch, illuminating
250,000 handmade electric light bulbs.
Crowds stood in wonderment as building interiors
on the grounds around the site glowed with electric light.
The demonstration had once and for all
proved the viability of alternating current,
its ability to transmit electricity over longer distances than Edison's
direct current sparked the imagination of engineers across the country
who created designs utilizing this new technology.
At Niagara Falls, the 167 foot drop inspired the construction
of a hydroelectric plant that provided lights to Buffalo, 26 miles away.
Shortly thereafter, cheap and plentiful electricity
lured a multitude of industries to the area.
The northwest, however,
continued to languish in the Depression.
Charles Baker was still deeply in debt
and was forced to take a job as a receiver at Merchant's National Bank.
Though Baker's salary was meager, the job afforded him
the time to explore the idea of hydroelectricity.
- “The power project developed more and more, in my mind,
expanding from the first thought of harnessing the cataract for near
at hand uses only until as the science of transmission developed.
My idea expanded accordingly so that in a few years I had conceived
a well-defined plan for utilizing the power of Snoqualmie Falls
and transmitting it to Seattle for industrial and illuminating purposes.”
Charles Baker.
[NARRATOR] With an idea in mind and a naive enthusiasm.
Charles traveled east to visit his father.
- Charles’ Father William Taylor Baker was a civic leader
in one of the most technologically progressive cities in America and Chicago.
Confidence in technology was very solid in terms of American business at that time.
“ I asked him to join me in this plan financially
and to become interested equally with me as a partner.
All of which interested him very greatly, for he had a mechanical mind
in addition to his well-known business shrewdness and commercial instinct.
When I left Chicago and returned to Seattle,
his last words in answer to my importunities were
I will send you the money to buy the falls.”
Charles Baker.
It is very obvious that William Baker trusted his son
and trusted his abilities
very clear.
[NARRATOR] In the fall of 1898.
Armed with the support of his father, Charles set out
to purchase the land that encompassed the falls.
- A lady owned all the land around the falls
and someone was also trying to buy it.
And he took great pride in the fact that he actually beat them to buying that land.
[NARRATOR] The bakers gambled that the falls could generate power
less expensive than the competing steam driven power plants, further enticing
industries to move to the growing cities of Seattle and Tacoma.
But even beyond its industrial impact, Charles envisioned the potential
of bringing affordable electricity to every Puget Sound resident
to protect the project from Charles's creditors, from his previous venture.
Father and son never reduced their arrangement to writing
land purchases, equipment and payroll For the newly established
Snoqualmie Falls Power Company would all be
under Williams name.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] With his father's financial support in place.
Charles Baker began the bewildering task of envisioning the multitude of elements
necessary to turn falling water into power.
- There were a tremendous number of unknowns, and they didn't really know
the geology of the site.
They didn't really know how this technology was going to work.
It can't be emphasized enough.
This is pretty cutting edge technology.
- He had to think about how to put all the pieces together,
how to carve out a cavity that solid
rock big enough to put generators, turbines.
He didn't have a hardware store down the street.
He could go rely on.
They had to get enough crew
that were knowledgeable enough to put all this together.
[NARRATOR] Building the powerhouse at the base of the falls would expose
the sensitive machinery to the perpetual mist, causing corrosion over time.
Instead, Baker decided to construct the plant underground behind the falls.
Similar to the one built in Niagara.
But unlike Niagara, where the turbines were under the falls and the generators
were on top, Snoqualmie Powerhouse would be completely underground,
an engineering feat that had never been attempted.
The idea proved even more daunting, considering he would need to dig
250 feet down through solid rock.
The project's massive scale and remote site
required skilled engineers dozens of motivated laborers,
as well as the infrastructure to support it all.
With Seattle still recovering from the financial hardships
from the Panic of 1893, men were hungry for work.
As soon as Baker announced his plans and local papers.
Three men from nearby Fall city hiked to the top of the falls, looking for jobs.
Baker hired them on the spot and named
one as the construction superintendent.
Shortly thereafter, Baker had amassed
a crew of 35 men
as the winter snowpack on the Cascades began to melt.
In March of 1898, the groundwork on Baker's
hydro electric dream began.
- Charles was fortunate in that he didn't even have to build a serious
railroad spur.
We had the Seattle, Lakeshore and Eastern Railroad
coming right by the lip of the falls.
- None of the major equipment was made in this part of the world.
All of that had to be brought across country by rail
and brought to the site by rail.
[NARRATOR] Baker's men laid down track
connecting the Seattle Lakeshore and Eastern Railroad
to the construction site and erected a five story hoisting tower
that would lift the immense cargo from the arriving train cars.
With the means now in place to receive supplies, equipment and even crew.
Houses were then built on site for Baker and his superintendent.
While a dormitory was constructed for the crew,
the town of Snoqualmie was a mile away.
And although employees and their families could shop
and go to school there, the men needed to be on hand at all times.
Married men and their families lived in four cottages,
the largest for the superintendent.
Single men bunked in a ten room dormitory where they took their meals.
A guest house
also called the president's house, sat highest of all, the structures
with its sweeping view of the power plant buildings and the top of the falls.
The cottages rented anywhere
from 7 to $12 a month
while lodging was constructed.
Supplies were ordered.
Baker shipped in 20 tons of dynamite, an air compressor system,
hard rock drills and two massive steam engines to power the operation.
They had to build their own steam plant
on the original riverbank in order to run their hydraulic drills,
in order to run the hoist that would be used to pull the rock out of the cavity.
[NARRATOR] Baker then hired the Puget Sound Bridge Company
to build a 15 foot cofferdam to keep the river at bay
from where they would begin blasting away into the bedrock.
(explosions)
Finally, on April
18th, 1898, the drilling began
using steam power drills ten at a time.
The crew bore down into the volcanic basalt
mining laborers known as powder monkeys tamp the dynamite into the holes
and touched off the charges for weeks on end, day and night.
The echoes of the dynamite blasts could be heard for miles
as the crew slowly carved out a shaft that measured ten by 28 feet.
- This was not a mining operation
where you could get in and go away
and you didn't have to think about the site anymore.
This is a place that still had to be watertight and stable
for the long term future after it was done.
[NARRATOR] After the smoke and dust cleared from each
blast, workers hoisted out the rock.
The large boulders were then crushed and deposited along the riverbank
to be used as the base for the transformer house
and support shops.
On and on the blasting and clearing continued
when the shaft reached a depth of 250 feet.
Laborers pointed their drills northwest and began to carve what Baker called
the great subterranean chamber
that would house the water wheel's generators and control system.
- They hollow out the cavity to give enough room to situate the generating equipment.
- The cavity is 200 feet long.
That's the length of two basketball courts placed end to end
40 feet wide, 25 feet tall.
- That is pretty incredible.
It's not sand. It's not dirt.
This is solid rock.
[NARRATOR] As the cavity neared completion, part of the crew
set out to drill another 400 foot tunnel for the Taylor race,
a channel that would return water to the river.
A 700 step stairway was built down to the base of the falls,
where another crew of men drilled from the opposite side.
- This was carefully surveyed out.
They began drilling in two directions at once
with a great deal of confidence
that they were going to meet in the middle.
[NARRATOR] The plan worked,
and within weeks the downstream crew punched through from the far side.
- After they were finished pulling all of the the rock,
all the spoil that they were pulling out of the cavity,
the equipment pieces, the turbines, the generators and everything,
all of that had to go down the elevator shaft.
- The largest piece weighed 26,000 pounds.
This is heavy stuff, too, even with modern machinery.
But in that day and age, without modern machinery,
incredible feat.
[NARRATOR] Along with the generators, water, wheels and control equipment,
Baker's men, lowered in sections of the penstock
a steel pipe seven and a half feet in diameter
that would carry part of the Snoqualmie River deep into the cavity.
Riveters hammered together each eight
foot section, caulk the joints and attach the pen
stock to steel receivers, which fed the water wheels.
An elevator powered by its own pen stock and waterwheel
allowed men and equipment to move up and down the shaft.
- All the foundry worked to create the molds.
There wasn't any to really go by.
They had to create just about everything.
- You actually had people who could do anything.
Electrical, welding, mechanical didn't matter.
- The guy that's pulling a rock out with his bare hands to the foreman
that's putting the crew together day in, day out.
There was no letting down.
They all wanted to see these units run.
They bought into it
in a big way.
[NARRATOR] To see the progress for himself.
Charles's father, William, traveled from Chicago
to the site on three occasions.
Impressed with the plans and the speed of construction,
William felt secure in his investment,
which today would amount to $15 million.
“Father's absolute and unwavering faith in my integrity,
judgment and skill in these matters were the principle.
Security for his money advanced in connection with our work.
His belief in me was never shaken.”
Charles Baker.
[NARRATOR] While work continued at the plant site.
Detractors mounted a public relations attack, slandering the engineer's efforts,
claiming that Snoqualmie Falls ran dry
in the summer and froze solid in the winter.
So-called experts pointed out that water power had never successfully driven
an electric lighting system and called the whole venture Baker's folly.
While Baker
dodged and confronted these political affronts,
he also battled the forces of nature and the challenges
of working with a technology still in its infancy.
One of the trials and tribulations he went through when everything froze up.
So my grandfather had a lot of things
to overcome.
[NARRATOR] When Baker purchased two water wheels,
they were so new that the manufacturers refused to warranty them.
With good reason.
After having these enormous units shipped to the Northwest,
loaded down the elevator shaft and installed
when run at full speed, the wheels vibrated so violently
that they threatened to destroy the steel pen stock.
So inefficient when they finally got to something like 20% of
what they expected to get out of the generators and made so much noise.
I understand that you can hear it clear down to Fall City.
[NARRATOR] The stress Baker shouldered was almost too much to bear.
His health deteriorated and in the midst of building the plant,
he required an emergency surgery to remove his appendix,
a procedure that had only been performed for little more than a decade.
While Baker recovered, construction continued.
Two new water wheels were ordered
from the Abner Gobel Company to replace the faulty units.
While those were installed below above the cavity,
the transformer house began to take shape.
The building contained electric transformers that would step up
the voltage before sending the power across the transmission
lines.
Baker's plans
did not end with a power station buried in the mountain
while crews assembled the generating plant.
Baker himself set out to find the path to send the electricity from Snoqualmie
to Seattle and Tacoma.
Logging crews cleared a
path some 300 feet wide that traversed forests and hills
from Snoqualmie to Issaquah to Renton and then to Seattle.
While the material to build the two sets of electrical poles
was readily available, the aluminum transmission lines, insulators
and all other supplies were brought in by horses.
“Probably no mountain lines, of course, more
for right of way than those from this plant.
For not only do they surmount extremely difficult mountains,
but they lead through continuous forests of dense spruce
and fir the trees of which are of great size.”
The New York Times.
- They had to construct not only the transmission wires,
but also the substations along the way, substation in Issaquah substation
in Renton to be able to get the electricity into the customers.
Now, that's over tens of miles.
And if you look at pictures, there's a road
following the transmission line all the way down, and people would go
on horseback up and down that to check on the integrity of the wires.
[NARRATOR] By mid-summer of 1899.
Crews that had been working around the clock in three different shifts
completed the final adjustments and the last system checks.
The only question looming in the minds of everyone was
would it work?
♪♪
[NARRATOR] When Charles Baker reflected on the months that had just passed.
He was not modest about the gamble he made and the toll it took.
“No man sacrifices absolutely all other prospects
mortgages his brains to one thing
gives up all sorts of any other future, impairs
his health, strength and vitality and suffers
the nightmares and man killing nerve strain, such as I have done
for any salaried compensation in money whatsoever.”
Charles Baker.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] On July 31st, 1899.
Baker gathered his wife,
his daughter, his chief engineers and a host of dignitaries
at the temporary powerhouse at South Third Avenue and Main Street
at 8:00
operators directed the waters of the Snoqualmie River into the ten
stocks falling 250 feet.
The water shot through jets aimed at the double water wheels
that spun the generators and induced a current.
In the transformer house operators closed the circuits,
sending power over 38 miles of transmission lines to Seattle.
Baker held his daughter Dorothy in his arms.
“The child with a look of wonder on her face, pressed the handle gently
and smiled as a blue spark ran among the machinery.
The lights burst forth brilliantly, and the words Snoqualmie
Light appeared on the powerhouse, just below a flash of light.
A whirring of machinery and the expression of triumph
in the faces of those who had the courage to embark
on one of the greatest undertakings in the West, the great force of
Snoqualmie Falls had been harnessed and was now subject to man's manipulation.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
- One can imagine the grin on Charlie's
face when this really began to work,
and he could see that all of his energy and time and his father's resources
were going to come to fruition had to be a real inspirational moment.
He went through the long, hard process of putting this place together
and the camaraderie that was developed between himself,
all of his engineers and crew.
- From Unbroken Rock to pull the switch that lit up the lights
on the side of the Snoqualmie power company and downtown Seattle in 16 months.
- It's just amazing.
And this had never been done before.
This was the first power plant constructed underground.
[NARRATOR] Civic leaders, businessmen and locals were duly impressed.
Some calling it the eighth Wonder of the world.
Baker had done it.
It was an unparalleled engineering marvel of its day, financed entirely
with family money and completed in an improbable timeframe of just 16 months.
This made all the more impressive by the fact that no deaths
occurred, nor even a major injury during its construction.
Baker had every reason to be proud
of his accomplishment, but wouldn't rest for long.
[NARRATOR] The new
technology had generated enough skepticism among Seattle residents
that Baker had launched his own public relations efforts
over the course of the plant's construction.
He wrote numerous articles for magazines, newspapers and scientific journals
and guided dozens of civic leaders on tours of the plant.
- His vision was to put the power plant here and to show it off to the world.
The grounds manicured.
The buildings were beautiful.
- I think some of the architectural features that fascinated us include the attention
to detail that you wouldn't ordinarily expect to see in an industrial site.
The brick, warbling, arched windows of the classical revival style.
- He wanted it to be the sort of place that people could come and see
what the marvels of the new electric age were going to look like.
[NARRATOR] While the architecture of the buildings created a beautiful setting.
More importantly, they housed the essential elements needed to keep
the plant operational.
- The machine shop was built primarily as a support structure
for the project, two machine pieces that the plant would need.
- When things broke, they couldn't go somewhere to get a spare part.
They had to have the facilities here to make whatever they needed.
[NARRATOR] Deep in the cavity.
Baker's men began installing the third and fourth generator.
Crews, meanwhile, continued to clear a 26 mile path through the forests between
Renton and Tacoma and hung transmission lines to the city
on commencement. Bay.
With an eye to the future.
Baker knew that he could gain
more customers by extending the distance of electricity's reach.
Compelled to push the technology even further.
In November of 1900, Baker staged
an unprecedented experiment.
He redirected the circuits so that electricity
ran from a generator in Snoqualmie to Seattle, back
to Snoqualmie, then to Tacoma, and then back to a generator.
At Snoqualmie.
Though the two units were only ten feet apart,
the current would have to travel a total distance
of 154 miles.
When Baker closed the final circuits,
the 1500 kilowatt generator began sending power
to the other generator, effectively turning it into an electric motor.
News of
Baker's results traveled across the AP wire, where
it was picked up by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York
and confirmed as the longest transmission of electrical energy in the world.
- The transmission was an absolute scientific milestone
for AC electronics.
[NARRATOR] The experiment had proved Baker's gamble on alternating current was a sound bet
and opened the door for more widespread use of hydroelectricity.
“During the past 20 years in the history of electrical engineering.
There has not been a time during which the work on the Pacific
Coast has not attracted the attention of scientific men.
But the marvels of recent accomplishment
are almost beyond the comprehension of the lay mind.”
The New York Times.
[NARRATOR] By March 1901, Baker finished phase
one of the first completely underground hydroelectric plant in the world.
The power
generated at Snoqualmie Falls was produced with such efficiency
that it cost one third to one half of that.
From steam powered plants,
Baker was poised to enter the electric market, but soon found that
delivering power and selling it to consumers were two different
matters.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] During the construction of the Snoqualmie Falls Electric Plant,
the Boston firm of Stone and Webster
quietly worked behind the scenes, consolidating several of Seattle's
independent power systems and streetcar lines
into the already established Seattle Electric Company.
Representing the Stone & Webster subsidiary was Baker’s chief nemesis,
Sidney Mitchell, the man who first brought Electric Light to the Northwest.
Mitchell held fast to the company line that no water power had ever been
mechanically or commercially successful, and that no water power ever would be
under generous
franchises granted by the Seattle City Council.
The Seattle Electric Company had amassed a monopoly and charged
whatever rates the market would bear with little government regulation.
When Baker applied to the City Council for a franchise of his own,
he found that he was expected to pay the city for the privilege
and could never charge any customer more than his lowest rate.
The inequity Baker faced did not go unnoticed.
“As for Mr. Baker and his company,
there are not enough strong expressive adjectives in the English dictionary
to tell of the injustice that they have received
at the hands of those in collusion with the Seattle Electric Company.”
The Seattle Mail and Herald.
[NARRATOR] In an attempt to sidestep the franchise restrictions.
Baker created separate entities the Seattle Cataract Company
and the Tacoma Cataract Company
that would own and operate the transmission lines to those cities.
But Mitchell and his allies were still able to freeze Baker
out of the Seattle market and even offered to buy him out.
Challenged to operate under such lopsided restrictions, Snoqualmie Power Company
was only able to sell electricity directly to a hotel and two flour mills.
The rest, he was forced to sell wholesale to the Seattle Electric Company
in Tacoma.
Baker found the political atmosphere to be slightly more receptive as the rates
Stone and Webster's affiliate charged were considered excessive.
Even so, Baker was still characterized as an outsider.
The Tacoma Ledger labeled him a member of the Chicago Ring
and portrayed him as having hypnotic control over Tacoma's
mayor and city council.
More adept now at these political games,
Baker planted false information about his rate proposal to the Tacoma City
Council with a banker he knew to be one of Mitchell's informants.
Mitchell took the bait and confidently submitted his bid.
Baker underbid him by a penny per kilowatt hour
and clinched the deal
by outmaneuvering Mitchell.
Snoqualmie Falls.
Power managed to clear close to $100,000.
By 1902, more than $2 million of profit in today's value.
But Charles and his father, William, were less concerned with short term profits.
Baker drew only a small salary for himself,
directing all the surplus revenue into his newest venture,
a power plant on the White River in Pierce County.
The father and son handshake partnership combined shrewd financing,
engineering, ingenuity, and the vision that this infant technology
would mature and grow, providing power to every home at a reasonable rate.
Their partnership presented an unstoppable force
that would endure for decades.
But all that would change in a matter of weeks.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] On the night of September 16th, 1903,
an operator in the cavity smelled smoke.
He rode the elevator up to the transformer house
just as flames engulfed the structure.
Burning transformer.
Oil flowed down the elevator shaft and into the cavity.
- 35,000 gallons of oil caught fire.
Newspaper accounts at the time talked about their being
burning oil miles downstream from the plant.
[NARRATOR] By the time the fire was extinguished, ten of the 13 transformers,
the elevator and three generators were nothing more than charred wrecks.
That same night, other fires destroyed a private power company in Seattle
and the Battery Room of the Seattle Electric Company.
Baker suspected foul play,
but all the events appeared to be accidents.
Had the fire occurred a week later, much of the damage could have been averted
as Baker's men were preparing to move the transformers
into fireproof compartments.
The Snoqualmie Falls Power Company had been severely crippled
and could provide only a fraction of its normal power
the Seattle Tacoma inter-urban powered entirely by the falls, immediately
switched to electricity from nearby steam plants and never lost service
businesses and city streets in Tacoma and Renton, however, went dark,
leaving residents searching for candles and kerosene lamps.
Baker's
men, who had taken great pride in the plant's construction and operation,
took it personally when the plant was nearly shut down
and worked at a feverish pace to repair the damage.
Miraculously, just 36 hours
later, the plant came back online with one generator
three salvage transformers and a privately contracted
steam plant.
As Baker and his men were catching their breath
on October 6th, 1903, just three weeks after the fire,
Charles’ father, William Taylor Baker, died suddenly in his sleep.
Charles was stunned by the unexpected loss
and later wrote of his father.
“No father, by his constant attitude, ever paid
a finer tribute to a son than this father thus did to me.
And no son ever felt a keener regard
for a father's welfare and happiness than I did for mine.”
[NARRATOR] In the midst of his grief, Baker was sent into a tailspin
when he realized that his father, who was the majority shareholder, had left
no will and no written agreement between them.
- Tragedy is that Charles and his father had done handshake
rather than written agreements,
and some of these did not hold up
in court back east.
[NARRATOR] Charles Baker explained to the estate administrators
that he was a 50/50 partner with his father in Snoqualmie and White River,
but he was unable to produce any written agreement.
The administrators now controlling the board of directors, acknowledged
Charles's tremendous contributions as president and chief engineer,
but would not recognize the oral agreement.
Baker Suspected the hand of Sidney Mitchell
and his confederates behind the scene, pulling strings.
Within a year, during which Baker rebuilt the plant.
His father's estate administrators liquidated and sold all of the assets.
By 1904,
the creator, builder and financier of
Snoqualmie Power was forced out.
Many of his best employees followed him in disgust.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] Charles Baker was left to begin anew, steadily rebuilding his fortune
in the southeastern part of the United States.
- My grandfather went on to Florida
and my mother and grandmother saw him on a newsreel,
pounding the golden spike with the governor on a Florida railroad.
[NARRATOR] Though Baker was often maligned and discredited by the falls new owners
in 1905, they continued with his plans
and added a fifth generator in the cavity.
With far greater efficiency, the new turbine and Unit five could
generate 5600 kilowatts, almost
as much as the first four units combined.
The additional power allowed the company to offer electricity
to customers in Everett, 44 miles away.
Baker's
successors decided to scrap the plans for the White River project,
leaving its completion to Sidney Mitchell's Pacific Coast Power Company.
By 1910, demand for electricity, however, continued to grow, prompting the Seattle
Tacoma Power Company to consider a second plant at Snoqualmie Falls.
It was always Baker's plan to expand the cavity in the opposite direction,
but drilling and blasting threaten the operations of the Snoqualmie Plant,
on which so much of the Puget Sound region had come to rely.
Manager opted for a second independent plant
whose powerhouse would be built well below the falls.
Beyond the mists, the threatened, the delicate electrical machinery.
Though Plant two would not be built underground,
it presented its own logistical challenges for the railroad
that hold in machinery, equipment, concrete
and sections of the Penn stock would need to be supplemented.
On the plant one side.
Narrow gauge tracks were laid down to the riverbank, where a ferry
built on site would transport supplies across the river up the other side,
then down the face of the cliff in a series of switchbacks.
- Plan two is another marvelous engineering feat.
The big challenge was in order to protect the scenery here,
they had to bore a tunnel underneath the area
where the old Snoqualmie Falls Lodge was.
[NARRATOR] The sounds of drills and blasting returned to Snoqualmie Falls
as crews bored again through the solid rock on the north side of the river,
this time excavating a tunnel 14 feet wide
and 1035 feet long,
blasting off and sent rocks across the river
and through the windows of plant ones transformer house.
At the end of the tunnel, a 250 by 20 foot
fore-bay was hewn out of rock to create a reservoir.
From the fore-bay.
Water entered the gatehouse
where head gates controlled the flow into the pen stock.
The riveted steel pen stock dropped the face of the cliff
to produce ahead of 255 feet, almost as strong as Plant one.
The newest Frances
turbine was installed with room for two more units.
This generator churned out 13,000 kilowatts,
more than all five units of plant one
on December 1st, 1910.
Plant two went online, doubling the output
from Snoqualmie Falls.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] Current from plant two helped power electric locomotives
on the Western end of the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railway
as it came across Snoqualmie Pass from Ellensburg.
Another big power customer moved into the area in 1914
when the Weyerhauser company opened its mill just upstream
and built the company town of Snoqualmie Falls.
Earlier in 1912, the Seattle-Tacoma Power
Company had accepted an offer of $150
a share from Stone and Webster to become part of Puget Sound.
Traction Light and Power.
The Boston firm now embraced all the electrical utilities
of Puget Sound, from Bellingham to Olympia and most of the street
and into urban railways.
The increasing capacity and spread of electricity fueled
economic growth throughout the Puget Sound region and the country.
Industrial use of electricity allowed plants to utilize labor
saving devices, increasing output and lowering prices.
Electric inter-urbans ran from Tacoma to Bellingham, spurring
the growth of suburbs and allowing farmers to sell their produce at city markets.
In 1905, Seattle City lights supplied
electricity to its first residential customer.
Four years later, President Taft sat in the White House and pressed
the telegraph key that illuminated the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition
on the University of Washington campus.
Over the next two decades, electricity evolved from a mysterious force of nature
into the most common household convenience.
Electric irons, radios, clocks,
toasters and refrigerators fueled the Roaring Twenties.
Demand for electricity continued
to grow almost exponentially over the decades.
As the Northwest contributed to the war effort
and the population boomed in the subsequent years.
In July 1957, the utility company
now called Puget Power expanded Plant Two with a second
pen stock and a new vertically mounted Frances turbine.
The new generator
induced 20,500 kilowatts of electricity, an amount
nearly equal to the output of plant one and two combined.
The steady march of technology kept pace
with the growing demand for power
as the politics of the past became a distant memory.
Puget Power had begun to fully acknowledge Baker’s contribution,
which had largely been ignored.
In the spring of 1945.
They underwrote a radio play explaining Baker's
role in the origins of their company.
“Charles Baker had a daring dream for those early days,
and whenever he expressed his plans, people would call him an idle dreamer.
It might even be that this falls right here will someday be
used to generate power for places as far away as Seattle, maybe.
And I think I'm the man to see that plan carried out.”
♪♪
- When we go back and visit the falls.
That's always something that the family is
felt a part of,
and that's part of our ancestry.
I'm, in a sense,
a bit overwhelmed in the fact that my grandfather
accomplished this.
[NARRATOR] From its audacious beginnings, deep in the cavity beneath Snoqualmie Falls,
a power company emerged that proved the viability of water
generated electricity transmitted over hundreds of miles.
It set the stage for what would become known today
as Puget Sound Energy.
Snoqualmie Falls generates a total of 44,400 kilowatts today,
enough to light more than 33,000 homes.
The prophecy of Moon the Transformer
that this lofty cataract would provide sustenance for its people.
Still rings true today and for the known
future.
A visit to the plant
is like traveling back in time more than a century.
- When you. Dropped down into the cavity
and you realize right away that you have stepped back in time.
- In this power plant.
Not only does the sense of place come from the buildings and the structures
they come from, the actual machinery that's being used to generate power.
- You look out on to the top of four units
that actually existed in their original form, for a hundred and ten years.
- What you're seeing are
the same turbines, the same generators.
Every single one of those is original.
- The lights that were put at the end of the cavity are still there.
1898.
[NARRATOR] Staring at the hypnotic cascading falls,
one man engineered a means to harness its power.
And in so doing, Charles Baker ushered in the age
of electricity to this corner of our nation,
defying contemporary scientific notions
and the onslaught of political slings and arrows.
Baker held confidence in a technology still, in the earliest days
of its infancy.
The power plant at Snoqualmie Falls was an engineering
marvel of the 19th century that brought power to the masses
and forever changed the lives of those living
in the Pacific Northwest.
“Father and I built the plant
with the result that there is no better built plant in the world.
It speaks for itself In mockery of our defamers.
Snoqualmie will still stand for centuries and for centuries to come.
It will still have the same duty to perform and will perform it faithfully.
The same rock chamber will be there and will contain generation
after generation of new water wheels and generators
with the same never ceasing din of industry.
Still converting the waste energy of nature to the uses of mankind.”
Charles Hinckley Baker, 1908.
♪♪